/// In the Future, Eyeglasses Translate and Creepy Music Plays Everywhere (Video)

While we’re on the subject of the computing needs of the future , I thought I’d remark on this Microsoft-produced video that recently emerged from its Office Labs think tank. The plot is an imagining of how we’ll get things done five to 10 years from now. In the video you’ll meet Ayla, a working mother on a business trip to Johannesburg; Ayla’s daughter, Shannon, who needs help making something for a school bake sale; and a guy named Qin who — well, I’m not entirely sure what he’s doing, but he starts out waiting for a subway train. These concept videos are always entertaining in the way they show us some slice of life from a routine day in some mildly utopian and antiseptic world of the future, one in which people don’t get stressed by business travel and don’t have hassles at the hotel check-in desks — and where hotel broadband networks actually work. There are lots of portable handheld screens, kind of iPad-like, really, on which people swipe and flick and make other interface gestures that we all intuitively understand now, thanks to — well, the iPad. Which is probably not the comparison that Microsoft is going for here. Ahem. Also, in the future there are apparently smart windows in taxicabs, and these windows deliver some informative augmented reality, saying things like, “your meeting tomorrow is in this building.” How does the taxi know Ayla’s schedule? From her phone — which looks like a notecard. Anyway, out of all the things that this video shows, the one thing I want is the eyeglasses that translate languages I don’t speak.

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Talk NYC/WW is your daily download of the tech, marketing and advertising news you need to know. It’s smartly curated to keep you up to speed on the innovators and innovations that are shaking up the digital world today.